The fumble call was even worse. The first two officials in the scrum immediately signaled second down while Eastern was in possession of the football. This is clear and obvious, the first two refs hold two fingers in the air for second down Eastern. 30 seconds later, another ref runs in and calls it Montana State ball. The call had already been made (twice). The replay said the call stands, because the replay was totally inconclusive. Had the one ref not changed the call of the other two, it’s Eastern ball.
Now, with that said, how the hell do you fumble in that situation? How do you give the ball to a guy without telling him that he needs to keep the football come hell or high water? That’s inexcusable. We giftwrapped this one today, and I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of hanging heads over the way we lost.
Montana State is a good team, but they’re nothing special. We had two weeks to prepare, and they ran exactly what we all thought they’d run…. It seemed like 50% of their plays were reads with the QB keeping the ball. And they took that rudimentary play and ran it all over on us because we can’t tackle.